Teachers first in line for ?250m homes help

Around two thousand teachers in London and the south-east are to be the first beneficiaries of a £250m government scheme to help finance housing for key public sector workers, it was revealed yesterday.

Stephen Byers, the transport and local government secretary, will announce the move early in September, amid growing concern that teachers, nurses, police officers and other public sector workers are being priced out of jobs in areas with high-cost housing.

Teachers have been earmarked for the first phase of the scheme. Mr Byers said: "The idea behind it is to provide support for key workers such as teachers and nurses to be able to afford to live and do their jobs. We should not have a situation where public servants like teachers and nurses are being priced out of employment in London. The problem with many people starting out in these professions, particularly teachers, is that they cannot be assured they can afford housing."

Help will be available in the form of interest-free loans, and help with deposits on a house or for shared ownership schemes. Bidders - mainly registered social landlords such as housing trusts - are being selected to run the schemes.

At least one member of a household must be eligible by working in one of the targeted groups, and the total family income will be assessed before awards are made. The grants will be repayable when properties are sold and subsidies will only be given out once mortgage agreements have been signed.

A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said: "This is good news for teachers in high-cost areas. We're working closely with the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions and there will be further details announced next month."

He said the government had already taken other steps to ease the problem of affordable housing for teachers.

In April, the then education secretary, David Blunkett, announced a £33m emergency fund to help teachers in schools with recruitment problems in some 58 local education authorities.

At the Holt school in Wokingham, Berkshire, 10 teachers have left their jobs in a year because of the punitive cost of housing. At the start of the new autumn term in September it will get £169,000 under this scheme, the DfES said yesterday. This money can be spread widely. Head teachers can use it for housing subsidies, to support childcare, travel costs, recruitment campaigns or, most likely, extra pay.

Doug McAvoy, the general secretary of the largest teaching union, the National Union of Teachers, said the south-east was not the only area with recruitment problems.

"The 2,000 teachers that will benefit will be delighted to get some help, because house prices in the south-east have gone berserk. But there's a problem with shortages around the country and there is a problem with house prices in other places, so while this targeted help will be of benefit, it will not deal with the underlying problem of widespread teacher shortages. It's thank-you to the government, but it is not addressing the basic problem," he said.

Chris Keates, deputy general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said the government still needed to tackle the underlying problem of attracting people into the profession.